Neighbor Jane Sherman said Martin was a typical 8-year-old who loved to ride his bike and play baseball. "There are no words to describe how they are feeling ... we are feeling," Sherman said, adding that the family was very close knit.

The death of Martin is particularly hard for Brad Harrington, executive director of the Boston College Center for Work and Family and research professor in the Carroll School of Management. Writing for the Huffington Post, Harrington, a Boston native, recalls falling in love with the marathon while watching the event as a young boy with his father:

At every marathon I have attended I have felt blessed to be a Bostonian. In spite of the many difficulties that any major city faces, there was one day every year when Beantown and its surrounding neighbors came together to celebrate our history, our city, our day, our race and, above all, the triumph of the human spirit. I pray that spirit will help us transcend this terrible moment. It's hard to lose the innocence of a lifelong love and harder still to grasp the magnitude of all that's been lost because of this unforgivable act. And hardest of all to think about an 8-year-old boy, on the first day of a lifelong love affair that would end before it was realized.

Whoever it is, we do know this: If anything in this world qualifies as evil, this is it. ... George W. Bush was right when he called the people who commit these acts "evildoers." We are all flawed and stand lower than the angels, but only a few among us eagerly descend to evil like that done in Boston on Monday afternoon. The evildoers are always out there, plotting to blow a hole in our everyday lives. Luckily, we have resilience, we have generous spirits and we have a legion of good guys on our side to care for the wounded and track down the killers. What we do not have is any realistic hope that the evil ones among us will leave us in peace for long.

Nicholas Thompson of the Atlantic is running veteran and has participated in the Boston Marathon in the past. He says iconic events such as the marathon clearly are a temptation for those trying to strike fear into Americans:

There's something particularly devastating about an attack on a marathon. It's an epic event in which men and women appear almost superhuman. The winning men run for hours at a pace even normal fit people can only hold in a sprint. But it's also so ordinary. It's not held in a stadium or on a track. It's held in the same streets everyone drives on and walks down. An attack on a marathon is, in some ways, more devastating than an attack on a stadium; you're hitting something special but also something very quotidian. When we find out who did this, we may well find some fascination with the event -- perhaps a foreign terrorist, or a sick American. Perhaps it was someone who spotted a terribly easy target. Or perhaps it was someone who saw a reflection of the human spirit and decided just to try to shatter it.

If there were many violent fanatics among us, they would have no trouble carrying out mass slaughter -- as the Newtown shootings proved. The number of places with little security and many people is huge, from shopping malls to street festivals to sporting events, like the marathon. There are more places open to attack than we can ever hope to protect. Fortunately, America is just not fertile ground for violent religious or political extremism. In a free, democratic society, the sympathy for expressing one's views through murder is very low. That's our greatest protection against terrorism.

In fact, the ballpark has always been a good place to show off our society's strength, to remind domestic and foreign terrorists that we won't buckle or cower or quit coming together as one. Sports have long served as a great unifier of black and white, or rich and poor, of old and young. People from diverse backgrounds can find common ground in the form of a team -- or an event like the marathon -- that embodies the resilience and vitality of their community.

Choosing the Boston Marathon as a target was strategic because it's an event that attracts people of all ages, all skills, from around the world, says Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports. It's also an event that shows how moments of terror won't break Americans, he says:

Boston is a concept that crosses all races and religions, all generations and geography. This is the world's finish line. ... Forget, for a moment, the who and the why. Instead think about the dead and wounded. And then think about the where and when those bombs went off. That moment right there, a crowded city street full of flags and wheelchairs and accomplishments. That's what someone tried to destroy on Monday. That's what they wanted to kill. Yet that's also what they never, ever will.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity." But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. ... We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago. So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

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